Number of job vacancies in Quebec is half of what it was in 2022

The number of job vacancies decreased for a third year in a row in 2025. It is even half of what it was in 2022, the Quebec Institute of Statistics indicated on Wednesday.

In its latest Employment Report for the year 2025, the ISQ specifies that there were then 118,000 job vacancies, a decrease of 14 per cent compared to the previous year.

For comparison, there were 241,700 job vacancies in 2022, more than double.

Three industries are particularly affected, as they had more than 10,000 job vacancies in 2025. These are health care and social assistance, with 31,100, manufacturing, with 12,300, and retail, with 10,300.

The picture varies considerably from one industry to another.

“What we can see is a decrease in the number of job vacancies in certain industries. For example, between 2024 and 2025, we are seeing a decrease of 2,100 job vacancies in retail trade, 1,400 in transportation and warehousing, and a whopping 7,800 in health care and social assistance,” Pierre-Olivier Paré, labour statistics analyst at ISQ, pointed out in an interview.

The Institute also noted a decrease in the number of job vacancies in the accommodation and food service industry.

The manufacturing industry, meanwhile, has declined and has not yet recovered its pre-pandemic employment level.

The construction industry is an exception. “There is something very interesting and very particular this year, which is that we are seeing declines in some industries, but the only one where we are seeing an increase in job vacancies is in the construction industry, where we are seeing an increase of 1100 job vacancies. That represents an increase of about 15 percent,” notes Paré.

Wage vs. inflation

And despite popular belief, the Institute notes that the average hourly wage has indeed increased more than the Consumer Price Index, by 3.6 per cent compared to 2.4 per cent for the CPI.

The average hourly wage in 2025 reached $35.05, an increase of 3.6 per cent compared to the previous year. Growth had been 4.5 per cent in 2024 and 4.7 per cent in 2023.

Meanwhile, “the consumer price index (CPI) increased by 2.4 per cent in 2025, a similar increase to that observed in 2024 (2.3 per cent), but lower than that of 2023 (4.5 per cent),” the Institute specifies.

And this wage/inflation observation is also confirmed in the longer term, from 2015 to 2025.

“This difference, which we see between 2024 and 2025, in fact, when we compare 2015 and 2025, we also see that wages have increased faster than inflation,” Paré pointed out.

“During the period 2015-2025, average hourly compensation increased by 44 per cent, while the CPI grew by just over 29 per cent,” noted the ISQ in its report.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews